PLEDGE TO IMPEACH

Perry's plight highlights liberty's real crisis

Once a high-level Reagan-era diplomat, Alan Keyes is a long-time leader in the conservative movement. He is well-known as a staunch pro-life champion and an eloquent advocate of the constitutional republic, including respect for the moral basis of liberty and self-government. He has worked to promote an approach to politics based on the initiative of citizens of goodwill consonant with the with the principles of God-endowed natural right.

This week I posted an article on my blog in which I look askance at the way Texas Gov. Rick Perry has handled the indictment brought against him by the DA in Travis County, Texas. The various organs of the elitist faction media want us to look at it in terms of partisan bickering, personality politics and the usual details of their shallow “soap opera” portrayal of politics. But, as Gov. Perry himself said in his court filing, it actually involves a critical constitutional issue, to wit, the Travis County DA’s disregard for the fact that the Texas Constitution vests the power to accuse and try the chief executive’s offenses in the legislative branch, not the judiciary. Misdirecting people to see this malicious or ignorant disregard for constitutional law as “business as usual” politics is not just mistaken, it’s downright deceitful.

I encourage readers of this column to read the article in question, as well as the background piece I posted in connection with it. If American liberty is to survive the crisis now threatening its survival, Americans must somehow break free of the “tunnel vision” mentality that cuts us off from the logic of constitutional self-government. We must stop lauding politicians who make decisions that serve their own narrow political ambitions, while injuring the institutions of just self-government that are the common good of the American people as a whole.

In America the unalienable rights that give rise to those institutions are guaranteed by law, including the pre-eminent law embodied in our national and state constitutions. What will become of these our common possessions (including the assumption that government’s powers are derived from the consent of the governed) once the constitutional supports for them have been toppled, circumvented, or rendered obsolete by the corruption of our habits and expectations?

That process is already well advanced. Consider, for example, an article I read Tuesday which noted that “under the Constitution, a president may enter into a legally binding treaty only if it is approved by two-thirds of the Senate.” Reporting on preparations for an international conference on the issue of “laws to reduce … carbon pollution,” the article went on to allege that “To sidestep that requirement, Obama’s negotiators are devising what they call a ‘politically binding’ deal. …” Now, how can an international agreement be “politically binding” for the United States if it has not obtained the political approval required by the U.S. Constitution before any treaty can have the force of law for the United States? If Americans allow their officials to step aside from the Constitution in this way, we are not just discarding constitutional provisions. We are ripping out the guts of constitutional self-government.

This is what I foresaw when I pleaded with people to recognize what was at stake as officials at every level contemptuously dismissed questions raised about Obama’s constitutional eligibility for the office of president. I said repeatedly that it wasn’t about Obama, but the whole authority of the U.S. Constitution. In the context of the eligibility issue, it became clear that the assault on the Constitution’s authority isn’t confined to the Obama faction. It includes the congressional leadership of the GOP, as well as judges and justices throughout the judiciary, at both the state and federal levels.

Thanks to the festering wound of border insecurity now threatening the health of our whole body politic; the dictatorial executive orders that directly threaten our liberty and safety; and the Obama faction’s pervasive assault on the freedom of speech, the free exercise of religion and the requirements of due process of law; more and more people are at last being roused to react against the twin-party assault on the main pillars of our constitutional republic.

But many still do so in response to the goad of this or that episode of abuse. They don’t seem to realize that the crisis of our self-government does not consist in the multiplicity of episodes. Each episode is just one aspect if a wholesale assault ongoing against our liberty. The most insidious facilitation of this assault comes from the pretended division between the Democratic and Republican parties. It is in fact a charade, intended to distract Americans from the real nature of the battle we are in.

It is the battle between the people as a whole, who are supposed to be the ultimate arbiters of justice, law and governmental power in the United States, and a self-worshiping elitist faction, determined to subject the government to their power exclusively, thereby ending America’s exception to the age-old pattern of government of, by and for the selfish advantage of a powerful few.

It is in the context of this age-old conflict that Americans need urgently to ponder the significance of the constitutional power of impeachment, whether it concerns the Texas Constitution, as in the case of Gov. Perry, or the U.S. Constitution, as in the case of Obama and those who are collaborating in his sundry treasons. Only as we do so will enough of us grasp the urgent need to mobilize the political will the American people need in order to thwart the elitist faction’s offensive against the God-endowed authority of the people of the United States.

To do so, we must use the leverage of our voting power to demand that congressional candidates solemnly pledge that, if elected, they will initiate and support the constitutional process for the impeachment and removal of offending civil officers of the U.S. government, including the present occupant of the White House and his cohorts. Only by this process of constitutional accountability will the integrity of our republic be restored. Have you joined the Pledge to Impeach mobilization? Are you encouraging everyone you can influence to do likewise?